Inspirational Quotes
and a fragment of a piece
Inspirational quotes. (I love unknowable people and untouchable stuff).
“No. One” was exhibited in a small and otherwise empty room – once a maid’s bedroom – one short flight of stairs above Debierrue’s downstairs workshop. An environment had been created deliberately for the picture. The visitor who requested to see it – no fee was asked – was escorted upstairs by the artist himself and left alone with the picture.
At first the viewer’s eyes became adjusted to the murky natural light coming into the room from a single dirty window high on the opposite wall, all he could see was what appeared to be an ornate frame, without a picture in it, hanging on the wall. A closer inspection, with the aid of a match or cigarette lighter, revealed that the gilded frame with baroque scrollwork enclosed a fissure or crack in the gray plaster wall. The exposed wire, and the nail which had been driven into the wall to hold both the wire and the frame, were also visible. Within the frame, the wire, peaking to about twenty degrees at the apex - at the nail – resembled, if the viewer stood well back from the picture, a distant mountain range.”
Charles Willeford- “the Burnt Orange Heresy”
“WC Fields – began as a tramp juggler. Went around the earth twice. Took thirteen years. Was thrown in the can in Philadelphia, London, Berlin, Africa and Australia or I could have beaten my time by years”
WC Fields - by himself
“next, arriving on a silver platter suitable for a roast turkey’s accommodation there appeared a quadruple portion of corned beef hash, mounded like an igloo and shingled over with at least eight poached eggs. Maybe there were more than eight – anyhow, practically a setting of eggs. With this order came a towering edifice of hot cakes. Like a fast workman double tiling a bathroom, he tessellated that mighty dome of hash with two layers of hot cakes, fitting them on top of the poached eggs. He then sluiced the ensemble with large quantities of melted butter and maple syrup, and using a carving knife and fork – no ordinary table tools would have served – he chopped the whole thing into chaos. And then, by Saint Appletitious I swear it, then with a dessert spoon he ate it to the last bite and the last lick. This was just average for him… I figured he must have a waiting list of about eight tapeworms…”
Irvin S Cobb, writing about railroad salesman Diamond Jim Bradys’ regulation breakfast routine, early 1900’s
“fancy a man ever being low in spirits…Life is too short for such betises…Existence is a pleasure, and the greatest. The world cannot rob us of that, and if it is better to live than to die, it is better to live in a good humour than a bad one…The sun shines on us all; every man can go to sleep; if you cannot ride a fine horse, it is something to look upon one; if you have not a fine dinner, there is some amusement in a crust of bread and Gruyere. Feel slightly, think little, never plan, never brood. Every thing depends upon the circulation; take care of it. Take the world as you find it, enjoy everything. Vive la bagatelle!”
Count Alcibiades de Mirabel (a thinly disguised Count D’Orsay) in Disraeli’s “Henrietta Temple”
“One night, while crossing the Arizona desert “Chink’s” bass drum was blown off the top of the station wagon. It was pitch black and nobody wanted to go get it because of snakes and ghila monsters. Finally “Moody” said to Scotty, “You, the valet man, I order you to get It”. Scotty just looked at Moody and said, “Man I just quit.” Me and the guys in my car kept on to the next town, while they waited five hours until daylight before retrieving the drum.”
Babs Gonzales – I, paid my dues - good Times no Bread
“walking down Broadway one afternoon, minding my own business, I was surprised to find the sidewalk heaving up into my face and the buildings beginning to jig and teeter, getting ready to crash-land on my skull. All mush behind the eyeballs and my muscles turned to jelly, I grabbed a lamppost and hung on. Sweat squirted from my face; my stomach was practicing sailor’s knots, there was a pain big as a baseball buried in the nape of my neck, and my scalp stretched so tight I was afraid it might split right down the middle. I held on, frantic, while the Apple melted down to churning applesauce and I bobbed in and through it all. My prayerbones played knock-knock. Jack, I was bad off. One look at me just then would have scared Doc Freud right back into the pill business”.
Mezz Mezzrow – Really the Blues.
“The curtains gave a vagrant rustle and from three parts of the orchestra and four parts of the balcony came piercing, wing-up-a-chimney shrieks of pleasure and torment. Behind the velvet ropes, overflow crowds pressed body on body to get a neck-straining view of the stage. Just those purple and yellow draperies, the golden coin of the spotlight beam. The scene was laid with a simple, but forceful, altogether impressive sense of dramatics.”
Harlan Ellison – Rockabilly
“There were two highly essential details of grifting which Mintz did not explain to his pupil. One of them defied explanation. It was an acquired trait, something each man had to do on his own and in his own way: i.e., retaining a high degree of anonymity while remaining in circulation. You couldn’t disguise yourself, naturally. It was more of a matter of NOT doing anything. Of avoiding any mannerism, any expression, any tone or pattern of speech, any posture or gesture or walk – anything at all that might be remembered.
Jim Thompson – The Grifters.
“I don’t ever want to hear any of that shit. All it does is remind me of what I was tryin’ to do.”
Jerry Garcia (the Grateful Dead) - talking about the thousands of free range live recordings of his band
“To this whorish quarter naturally gravitated the human scum and riff-raff who, once the news of the discovery of gold had gained wide circulation, poured into San Francisco from the ports of the seven seas in ever-increasing numbers…….By the early autumn of 1849 the arrivals from Australia had become so numerous, and so thoroughly dominated the underworld, that the district in which they congregated came to be known as Sydney-Town, and it was called so for some ten years………The villainous inhabitants of Sydney-Town were popularly called Sydney Ducks or Sydney Coves, but more often the former. It was a common saying in early San Francisco, whenever a particularly atrocious crime was committed, that “the Sydney Ducks were cackling in the pond.” Unquestionably, these foreign felons gave San Francisco’s underworld it’s initial flavor: they were pioneers in the viciousness and depravity for which the Barabary Coast became famous, and the echo of their unholy cackling was not stilled for more than half a century..”
Herbert Astbury – The Gangs of San Francisco
“Of her songs, it is quite impossible to judge by the few surviving recordings: these are all pre electric, and pretty dreadful. It is clear, also, that she depended enormously on the personal “projection” of her numbers, so that even a faithful recording would probably miss what was most important. Yet we are forced to believe not only infatuated old-timers, but artists like Sarah Bernhardt who declared she was “the only woman of genius on the English stage” (though perhaps this was just to be bitchy to the others) and Beerbohm, who bracketed her with the Queen and Florence Nightingale as the three most memorable women of the Victorian age”.
Colin MacInnes – Sweet Saturday night. (in reference to Music Hall performer Marie Lloyd
“…in a murky twilight, under a low sky, men, horses and cannon are once more bogged down in the mud. Across the sodden fields comes the loud rumble of regiments on the move, while the muffled boom of cannon can be heard in the distance. The men have been marching all night to meet their fate, weary as beasts of burden; here and there in the grass, a few are already dead, their eyes wide open with astonishment.
Yet, when did this vision, that at first seemed so overwhelmingly true in every detail, suddenly become confused and begin to fall apart? Napoleon again experiences the same dizziness that he had felt in the unfamiliar bedroom. Edmond the veteran foams at the mouth and screams and whirls around on his crutch like one possessed, as he goes through all the torments of that incredible day. Under this hail of words, Napoleon is horrified to discover the image of ANOTHER Waterloo, which is more and more difficult to reconcile with his own memory and sense of logic. He can no longer find a single landmark on the plain; even as he stares at it, the scene becomes weirdly distorted. Edmond the Veteran’s is drawing him into a whirlwind where his reason falters and is about to be swallowed up. He struggles to break free; with one final effort, he suddenly resists and interrupts his relentless guide: “No, no! It’s not the grenadiers who are holding the Belle – Alliance, its’ the dragoons!...”
Simon Leys “the Death of Napoleon”
“I regret,” said Mr Vanleigh with great care and some effort, “that my fixed limits of time are filled with these present most…most unintentional ailings. Otherwise I could speak amply. Let this suffice. Neither the sun nor man permits themselves to be gazed at fixedly. One must view the first through darkened glass, the second through eyes darkened with love or …what you will… pity, jealousy, ignorance, scandal… what a blind world this is…!”
Hal Porter , “The Tilted Cross”
“I enter the world called real as one enters a mist. Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them…...”
JULIEN GREEN, Journal
“In the camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundred and I have often thought that as Mrs White would read the same and knowing that I lived near, she would pray for my appearance and that she might be saved. I did come but had not the power to convince those that were in command over me to pursue my plan for her rescue. they would not listen to me and they failed.
“Kit Carsons own story”
“There is an ironic footnote. In Mrs White’s personal belongings, which were recovered, was a novel portraying Kit as a great Indian fighter, a hero who had never lost a battle and did not know the meaning of defeat. It was the first such book Kit had ever seen, but Dr Peters indicates that he displayed only a mild interest in it. He was far more concerned about the party’s inability to come to grips with the Apache warriors.
Noel B Gerson “Kit Carson- folk hero and man”
“Brummel’s whole life was an influence, that is to say something which cannot be told. One is sensible of this influence, all the time it lasts, and when it ceases, it is possible to note the results; but if they are of the same nature as the influence which caused them and have no longer duration, then their history becomes impossible….. a few years fallen upon the manners of a society bury them deeper than any lava. Memoirs, the history of these manners, are themselves merely approximations……. and in truth, that part of every society which leaves the last trace , the fewest remains, an aroma too subtle to last, is manners, manners that cannot be passed on, and it is by them that Brummell was a prince of his time…”
Jules Barbeu D’Aurevilly “DANDYISM”
with Georgio “the dove” Valentino at Beau Brummels grave in Caen, France
“Most of us had seen a film called SANDERS OF THE RIVER, based on Edgar Wallace’s book, before we went out and suddenly here was this thing, it was real; one was walking behind a long line of porters and the sun got up in the morning glinting on the spears of the porters – and it was just like the films.”
Charles Allen – Tales from the Dark Continent
“…he made minute, closely written notes that paint vividly all that he saw, for his pleasure alone. He had found his eyes again, and his ears, both dimmed for so long by the narrow confines of the Tower. He could see with fresh wonder the white flash of the flying fish over the waves, like the Spirit that moves on the waters; the swift onslaught of a sudden storm, the flight of fifteen rainbows off Trinidad that terrified the crew as another portent; and above all the huge spaces of the night sky; and the Southern Cross and the stranger stars, long ago familiar to him and now shining clear again above his head, instead of a stone ceiling…”
Margaret Irwin – That Great Lucifer – a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh
OH MAN, THE TWISTINGS AND ENCLAVES
AND TANGLEMENTS
AND BLANK MISERIES OF PERSONALITY
WILL BE LEFT BEHIND! The tortures
and the agonies will be left off HERE…
…. WE SHALL STEP FROM THE BREAST OF MATTER
TO EXPLORE
into the Negative Universe
where all will be feasting
of the physical spirit with shapes of turmoil
wrested from it.
DEATH IS A BLAST OF THE PHYSIQUE THROUGH THE MIND…
Michael McClure, Ode to the Negative Universe – STAR - poems
Finally, this is a fragment broken off from a file of hundreds of pages of text I worked on for more than ten years but just couldn’t really get it across the line. The line being some sort of coherent whole. I had put out a memoir and the publisher looked at it and tossed it back in exasperation. It had/has its moments and it also had some mad energy. Some kind of a point in there as well. I just couldn’t ever get it to settle.
Its point or attempted landfall was all around myth and reputation and story tellers and story readers. All being mixed up. I just looked at it now and got quite amazed at the intense prose and the work I put into it but I also know there’s no place for it in the world. I am quite happy to be a songwriter. That’s where all my stories are. I wanted this long story to wind up and release and then wind down, slowly. My writing style was and is very much influenced by all the pulp writers I read all through the 80s. Those old paperbacks still line our studio, more as insulation than anything else. Nowadays I prefer to read classics. Nabokov, John Cowper Powys, Doris Lessing, Willa Cather. Slow moving stuff.
This bit is a kind of footnote by way of further confusing or enlightening the reader during the winding down section.
Testimonial #3 – from an online digital life histories forum
The town of Johansen, an invite-only web community located within the directory of an antique server in the back office of a mid-western funeral parlour owners’ guild, was a glitchy ghost town. A place where all the best conmen and women came to retire and take off their cloaks, letting them fall to the ground as they got finally, totally clean in the clear waters of the artificial lake in the centre of the town. Here they could all breathe out, finally, amongst peers, comrades, contemporaries and equals. Other dudes who had been pulling long and short strings all their lives. Throwin’ one into the world, just for practice. Players, loners and solo artists all. Lone wolves. Independent operators. Here they would club together and tell a few war stories of the easy time they had had with it out among the squares. There was a kind of rogues’ gallery, a hall of infamy, a greatest hitter chart, and the man known as the Collar was revered as a stand-up guy.
In the language of those in the game, he had ascended through all the levels to finally become ‘dark’. Completely obscured. He was both filled in and hollowed out. Densely pixelated and transparent. He had never given his true self to the world; he had never weakened, he had never squealed. He took his secret face to the grave.
On what passed for a street in that static, puzzling screenshot of a wished-for world (built using cascading style sheets and frames on a long-outmoded, cracked version of a platform), there had also been talk of a daring young woman who had gone by the name of Dalton. Nobody had heard of her for a long while. Nobody remembered much of anything about her. She was so elusive, she had escaped everything, and hadn’t come back for a curtain call and after-show party in Johansen. She was dark, really gone, too far gone. Not a trace.
In the town full of retired liars, fakes, counterfeiters, ringmasters and cheats, all having their lawns mowed and their hair cut by wage earners from the witness protection program, no one cheered. One of those things a woman did even better than a man but, ultimately too well. Because when she went over the side, she was GONE.